Guatemala Former Tax Head Responsible For Pulling Oligarchs' Wealth Detained
After chasing the wealth of Guatemalan oligarchs and the graft charge that he filed against a former president during his period, the former Tax Administration head is now in the hands of the Guatemalan government after being arrested for falsification of official documents on Wednesday.
The head of the Tax Administration Superintendency (SAT) from 2016 until 2018, Juan Francisco Solorzano Foppa, built a reputation in the past after he brought cases against powerful families in Guatemala that hold the majority of business in the country.
Foppa also revealed and reported the corruption happening connected with SAT. He uncovered the defrauding, which helps businessmen in avoiding their supposed taxes.
Foppa was detained on Wednesday due to an accusation of falsification of official documents. According to Reuters, the ex-Tax head stated that the detention does not give him any shame. While showing his handcuffs to the media inside the court, he mentioned that this only shows that they are touching the powerful individuals in their country.
Meanwhile, before he joined SAT, Foppa was a team member of a group that made a revelation regarding the first case of corruption of former Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina as he was a prosecutor at the time. Later on, he was brought down by a series of scandals and corruption.
After the series of revelations and scandals, Molina has been in prison since he lost his immunity after he resigned in 2015 and faced five separate charges. But on Wednesday, the first chamber of the Court for High-Risk Crimes stated that they have dropped one of those charges connected to money laundering and corruption.
In one of his social media accounts, Tiziano Breda, a Crisis Group analyst for Central America, shared was another setback in the fight against corruption and impunity in Guatemala. He made the comment after hearing that one of the charges was dropped that the move of the court.
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More Arrests
The Guatemalan police also arrested Anibal Arguello on Wednesday. Arguello was a lawyer for the CICIG or International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, which is a United Nations-backed anti-corruption group. Argüello stated that right now, the networks of power, which they have been questioning for years, are now retaliating, San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The arrest is part of the latest setbacks of the campaign of United States President Joe Biden by holding accountable individuals in Central America. The administration of Biden has targetted corruption in the so-called Northern Triangle, which consists of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. It is part of the $4 billion plan of the Biden Administration that addresses the root causes that drives migration in the region.
A day before the arrest, a U.S. State Department report on Central American officials "credibly alleged" to be corrupt was released. Based on a list released by the office of U.S. Representative Norma Torres on Tuesday, six sitting Honduran lawmakers and two Guatemalan legislators were included on the list, Al Jazeera reported.
The leader of the nongovernmental Unit for Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Jorge Santos, said that recently they have seen a clear attempt in blocking the opponents of ruling elites and even those who sit in the government.
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